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An amazing week with FCP X!

What an amazing week with FCP X. A client came in on Monday with 14 hours of GoPro footage. We started at 10. Had the footage copied over by 10:30. Imported by 10:40. Keyworded by 11. And finally, a first cut of the :60 spot with some fx and color by 4:30.

On Tuesday, we made revisions of the cut in the AM and early afternoon. We then started in on a completely different :30 spot culled from the same footage. That was done by 6:30. Using roles, I was able to export multi-channel splits in the full-res prores.

It was very sad, but due to unforeseen issues, we had to transfer the project over to Avid for the east coast editor to work on! So, on Wednesday, I used Xto7 (which worked brilliantly) and then Automatic Ducked the timelines to Avid. That took until from 10 until 4:00. Such a bummer.

At 4:01, client rushed in needing a comp reel with over 250 effects shots to choose from… footage was all h264 at 960×560…. And I needed to leave by 7 at the latest. This was clearly a rush job and not meant for to be edited with precision. But that didn’t stop me. By 7, we had a fully exported cut with music. It was nerve-wracking, but the software didn’t fail me. In this scenario, no transcoding was the key to making things go insanely fast.

To top it off, last night, a business partner came over to my place with a drive of footage for a series of web spots that we shoot every month for Lamps Plus. I’ve been trying to get him over to FCP X from 7 for the past few months. Frankly, it’s a job that’s literally meant for X, especially because Slice X really comes in handy with the all-white backgrounds. While he was overwhelmed by the newness of things, he was amazed at how quick we got the first cut put together. He clearly saw the potential.

Sad as this may sound, my evening ended in bed with a portable thunderbolt drive and my Macbook Pro, logging interview footage for a mini documentary I shot two weekends ago. Luckily, my amazing fiancé, who is also an editor, was happy to watch the footage with me since this will be her first job cut in FCP X, too!

Admittedly, I couldn’t have cut the :60 and :30 GoPro in this amount of time without the producer’s fore-knowledge of the footage. But FCPX really came through on everything. No need to transcode and super-quick organization were the keys to making everything happen.